Download or read book Pensions Under Attack written by Monica Townson and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2001-02-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada's aging population has raised cries of alarm from some quarters. Critics warn of a demographic time bomb waiting to explode and an age war over pensions as the baby boom generation starts to retire in the next decade. They say the answer is to get rid of public pension programs like the Canada Pension Plan and force people to contribute to their own personal savings plans instead. Will this spell disaster for the elderly, or is it a bold new idea for coping with rising costs? Monica Townson, a prominent independent economist, discusses the forces behind the push to privatize public pensions and looks at the likely impact of privatization on the financial security of futre seniors. She describes how Chile, under the Pinochet dictatorship, replaced its public pension plan with a forced savings scheme and became the darling of right-wing governments around the world, and how Britain, under Margaret Thatcher, introduced opting out of public pensions and triggered a major scandal involving some of the big names in the insurance industry. As the debate about pivatization heats up the new millennium, Pensions Under Attack provides the information needed to question the hidded agenda behind the current push to privatize public pensions. It will be a timely contribution to a discussion whose outcome affects the personal financial security of every Canadian.
Download or read book Pensions Under Attack written by Monica Townson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Will privatizing public pension plans spell disaster for the elderly, or is it a bold idea for coping with rising costs? Major changes to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) were made in 1998. Most likely on future agendas will be the abolition of the CPP and its replacement with a system of mandatory RRSPs. Monica Townson looks at the forces behind this push to privatize public pensions and examines countries where privatization has already taken place. As the debate continues in the new millennium, Pensions Under Attack provides the information needed to question the agenda behind the push to privatize public pensions.
Download or read book Pensions and Corporate Restructuring in American Industry written by Gordon L. Clark and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book to systematically evaluate the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, Gordon Clark argues that the law has failed to project workers' pension rights in situations where it was expected to be most effective: when corporations restructure in the face of enhanced market competition and technological change. Pensions and Corporate Restructuring in American Industry examines recent trends in corporate behavior and government policymaking in the United States and finds that the moral and ethical foundations of regulation are under attack. As a result of intense competitive pressures, Clark argues, some of America's major corporations have begun to flout government regulations designed to protect workers - and to treat the attendant law suits as just another cost of doing business. He finds evidence that some have even used restructuring as the means to avoid statutory obligations to workers. In a series of case studies - including the bankruptcy of the LTV Corporation, the radical restructuring of International Harvester Corporation into Navistar Corporation, and the sale and restructuring of Continental Can Corporation - Clark evaluates the effectiveness of current regulations and the role of government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. His analysis shows that many of the problems of enforcing ERISA can be traced to the act itself - the product of compromises among overlapping and competing interests that fatally limited its effectiveness. Clark concludes that any new regulatory framework must clarify the connections between restructuring and the welfare of workers, connections generally ignored inthe litigation that dominates corporate life today.
Download or read book The Attack on Pensions written by Frank Goldsmith and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN LABOR TODAY SPECIAL REPORTTHE ATTACK ON PENSIONSThe history of pensions and the struggle to defend guaranteed income after retirement.We live in a country with private ownership of the means of production. Social Security is the only publicly guaranteed pension system in the United States. It must be defended by the working class and the trade unions. The struggle to defend and expand Social Security needs to be first on the workers 'agenda. As Joe Glazier said: "What do you do when you are too old to work and too young to die?" The demand for the 8-hour day was so that workers could have leisure time for "what they will." What good is leisure time in old age without sufficient guaranteed income?http://www.labortoday.us/
Download or read book The Political Economy of Public Pensions written by Eileen Norcross and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public pensions in the United States face an impending funding crisis in the wake of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 recession. Many cities and states will struggle to meet these growing obligations without major cuts in government services, reneging on pension promises, or raising taxes. This Element examines the development of the pension crisis through the lens of political economy. We analyze the knowledge and incentive problems inherent in the institutional structure, governance, and accounting of public pensions. We conclude by offering several institutional, governance, and reporting reforms to address the pension funding crisis.
Download or read book Hope We Die Before We Get Old written by Patricia Dilley and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American institution of retirement has sustained numerous attacks over the last twenty years, to the extent that it may cease to exist in its current form by the time most of today's workers reach their mid-sixties. Two of the major components of the U.S. retirement system, private pensions and Social Security, have either declined or are under attack, and thus may not be able to provide support for the elderly in the future, particularly low and middle income retirees. Changes in employment policies, volatility in investments available for retirement savings plans, and proposals to privatize Social Security threaten the financial basis for retirement itself over the next twenty years. Human beings have always structured their societies, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia, to some extent around sustaining elderly members of the population, but for almost all elderly people, work into extreme old age and disability was the norm until the twentieth century. The innovation of the last century, and specifically of Social Security, was to make retirement the mechanism for caring for the elderly, and to make retirement the norm for the elderly of all income groups. The current debate over privatizing Social Security, combined with legislative neglect of the weakening employer-provided pension system, threatens to return the United States to the pre-20th century methods of caring for the old - requiring them to work until death or disability makes work impossible, or allowing responsibility for their care and upkeep to fall on individual family members or friends. The alternative is to make moderate revisions in the institution of retirement itself; phased retirement, increased funding for Social Security benefits for lower and moderate wage workers, and exploration of a citizen-based, rather than employment-based, retirement income system, are all possible avenues to maintain retirement as an expectation for workers at all income levels.
Download or read book The Rise of the Working Class Shareholder written by David Webber and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Steven Burd, CEO of the supermarket chain Safeway, cut wages and benefits, starting a five-month strike by 59,000 unionized workers, he was confident he would win. But where traditional labor action failed, a novel approach was more successful. With the aid of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a $300 billion pension fund, workers led a shareholder revolt that unseated three of Burd’s boardroom allies. In The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor's Last Best Weapon, David Webber uses cases such as Safeway’s to shine a light on labor’s most potent remaining weapon: its multitrillion-dollar pension funds. Outmaneuvered at the bargaining table and under constant assault in Washington, state houses, and the courts, worker organizations are beginning to exercise muscle through markets. Shareholder activism has been used to divest from anti-labor companies, gun makers, and tobacco; diversify corporate boards; support Occupy Wall Street; force global warming onto the corporate agenda; create jobs; and challenge outlandish CEO pay. Webber argues that workers have found in labor’s capital a potent strategy against their exploiters. He explains the tactic’s surmountable difficulties even as he cautions that corporate interests are already working to deny labor’s access to this powerful and underused tool. The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder is a rare good-news story for American workers, an opportunity hiding in plain sight. Combining legal rigor with inspiring narratives of labor victory, Webber shows how workers can wield their own capital to reclaim their strength.
Download or read book The People s Pension written by Eric Laursen and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the potential benefits of a government-independent, democratized Social Security system to support dependents suffering from the reduction of other government benefits.
Download or read book The Betrayal of the American Dream written by Donald L. Barlett and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the formidable challenges facing the middle class, calling for fundamental changes while surveying the extent of the problem and identifying the people and agencies most responsible.
Download or read book Clinton s Radical Attack on Middle Class Pension Wealth written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Joint Economic Committee (JEC), based in Washington, D.C., presents the full text of a paper entitled "Clinton's Radical Attack on Middle Class Pension Wealth," published September 1995. The paper discusses the use of pensions to invest in economically targeted investments (ETIs) and the impact on the middle class.
Download or read book Pensions in Peril written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Under Attack Fighting Back written by Mimi Abramovitz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-03 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abramovitz argues that welfare reform has penalized single motherhood; exposed poor women to the risks of hunger, hopelessness, and male violence: swept them into low paid jobs, and left many former recipients unable to make ends meet.".
Download or read book Pension Ponzi written by Bill Tufts and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vast majority of Canadians are blissfully unaware that every man, woman and child in Canada now owes a $35,000 share of government debt and must pay this back, with interest! Make no mistake, this debt will change our country and affect every single Canadian in the decades to come. You may think you have planned for your retirement and are safe, but the government must find a way to recover this borrowed money, and they can only do that by raising your taxes and reducing your hard-earned benefits. How did this debt come about, and why can't we simply pay it off? Pension Ponzi lays the blame squarely at the feet of the politicians who refused to stand up to Canada's public sector unions. The fact is Canada's public sector, which accounts for 20% of the workforce, has been grossly overpaid relative to their counterparts in the private sector with cushy pensions paid for with your taxes and new debt. There is no denying that the country does not have the financial resources to ensure that the next generation of Canadians will have the same standard of living as the ones before it-or to support our growing seniors population. Meeting our public sector pension obligations will break the current social safety net that is a pillar of the Canadian way. Can you escape this bleak future? Can you afford to live longer? Nationally-recognized pension expert Bill Tufts and award-winning journalist Lee Fairbanks explore how this catastrophe came about and then suggest ways that government can fix what's broken, and how you as an individual can protect yourself from the financial calamity that is about to engulf Canada.
Download or read book State and Local Pensions written by Alicia H. Munnell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the financial crisis and Great Recession, the health of state and local pension plans has emerged as a front burner policy issue. Elected officials, academic experts, and the media alike have pointed to funding shortfalls with alarm, expressing concern that pension promises are unsustainable or will squeeze out other pressing government priorities. A few local governments have even filed for bankruptcy, with pensions cited as a major cause. Alicia H. Munnell draws on both her practical experience and her research to provide a broad perspective on the challenge of state and local pensions. She shows that the story is big and complicated and cannot be viewed through a narrow prism such as accounting methods or the role of unions. By examining the diversity of the public plan universe, Munnell debunks the notion that all plans are in trouble. In fact, she finds that while a few plans are basket cases, many are functioning reasonably well. Munnell's analysis concludes that the plans in serious trouble need a major overhaul. But even the relatively healthy plans face three challenges ahead: an excessive concentration of plan assets in equities; the risk that steep benefit cuts for new hires will harm workforce quality; and the constraints plans face in adjusting future benefits for current employees. Here, Munnell proposes solutions that preserve the main strengths of state and local pensions while promoting needed reforms.
Download or read book Transparency and Funding of State and Local Pension Plans written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Oversight and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Decisions of the Department of the Interior in Appealed Pension and Retirement Claims written by United States. Department of the Interior and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Using Public Pensions to Balance State and Local Budgets written by United States. Congress. House. Select Committee on Aging and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
